Page 129 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

EtheRealization

the bottle, Pandora’s plagues won’t get back in the box, and the
knowledge of building nuclear weapons will not be extinguished
except in a nuclear holocaust. It is not therefore a moral issue for
anyone sophisticated enough to perceive the inevitable; our tragic
destiny encoded genetically, perhaps, but nonetheless ineluctable. The
‘supermind,’ if you want an exaggerated name for it, will be built—if
not by me, then by someone else. And soon. Man, since the
Enlightenment, has been systematically stripped of his delusory place
at the center of the cosmos, at the height of divine creation and at the
helm of his own brain; ironically, as these false positions have been
eliminated by science and technology, that same enterprise has
overtaken his physical functions one by one—the wheel, the
projectile, the lever, hydraulic and electric power—giving him yet
another false position: the master of nature. The final deprivation of
illusion, realization of external intelligence unhindered by the
limitations in capacity and lifespan of a human brain, will itself have
to coexist with nature or face elimination. If our personalities are not
permanently programmed into it, perhaps we have a chance to
survive: in a diminished capacity relative to our pretensions, of
course, but probably not in terms of our true potential for mischief
and misrule.”
Quite a speech. Any doubts of Knox’s sincerity I had carried into
the Rabbit Hole disappeared then and there. I hoped the same fire
had vaporized any of his reservations about my authenticity. Yes, my
ally in these ventures was always heat, not light.
“Mr. Knox,” said I, without excessive reverence, “Entelekon
could not agree more with your plan. If we, as a species, are to be
knocked from a perch we do not deserve, thereafter to be humbled
into rationality, so be it. And that is, ultimately, our mission. The
truth might not set us free, but the freedom we’ve already enjoyed
has not been worth the price—not for us or the planet we inhabit. As
for sophistication and the inevitable: those are issues we would not
care to address. Suffice it to say that we are here to help. That means
money, sir: it is our conclusion that you need raw computational
power and a few software developers to achieve your goal. Is that
correct?”

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